DESCRIPTION

This module implements a client interface to the POP3 proto-
col, enabling a perl5 application to talk to POP3 servers.
This documentation assumes that you are familiar with the
POP3 protocol described in RFC1939.
A new Net::POP3 object must be created with the new method.
Once this has been done, all POP3 commands are accessed via
method calls on the object.

CONSTRUCTOR

new ( [ HOST ] [, OPTIONS ] 0
This is the constructor for a new Net::POP3 object.
"HOST" is the name of the remote host to which an POP3
connection is required.
"HOST" is optional. If "HOST" is not given then it may
instead be passed as the "Host" option described below.
If neither is given then the "POP3_Hosts" specified in
"Net::Config" will be used.
"OPTIONS" are passed in a hash like fashion, using key
and value pairs. Possible options are:
Host - POP3 host to connect to. It may be a single
scalar, as defined for the "PeerAddr" option in
IO::Socket::INET, or a reference to an array with hosts
to try in turn. The "host" method will return the value
which was used to connect to the host.
ResvPort - If given then the socket for the "Net::POP3"
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object will be bound to the local port given using
"bind" when the socket is created.
Timeout - Maximum time, in seconds, to wait for a
response from the POP3 server (default: 120)
Debug - Enable debugging information

METHODS

Unless otherwise stated all methods return either a true or
false value, with true meaning that the operation was a suc-
cess. When a method states that it returns a value, failure
will be returned as undef or an empty list.
auth ( USERNAME, PASSWORD )
Attempt SASL authentication.
user ( USER )
Send the USER command.
pass ( PASS )
Send the PASS command. Returns the number of messages in
the mailbox.
login ( [ USER [, PASS ]] )
Send both the USER and PASS commands. If "PASS" is not
given the "Net::POP3" uses "Net::Netrc" to lookup the
password using the host and username. If the username is
not specified then the current user name will be used.
Returns the number of messages in the mailbox. However
if there are no messages on the server the string "0E0"
will be returned. This is will give a true value in a
boolean context, but zero in a numeric context.
If there was an error authenticating the user then undef
will be returned.
apop ( [ USER [, PASS ]] )
Authenticate with the server identifying as "USER" with
password "PASS". Similar to "login", but the password is
not sent in clear text.
To use this method you must have the Digest::MD5 or the
MD5 module installed, otherwise this method will return
undef.
banner ()
Return the sever's connection banner
capa ()
Return a reference to a hash of the capabilties of the
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server. APOP is added as a pseudo capability. Note
that I've been unable to find a list of the standard
capability values, and some appear to be multi-word and
some are not. We make an attempt at intelligently pars-
ing them, but it may not be correct.
capabilities ()
Just like capa, but only uses a cache from the last time
we asked the server, so as to avoid asking more than
once.
top ( MSGNUM [, NUMLINES ] )
Get the header and the first "NUMLINES" of the body for
the message "MSGNUM". Returns a reference to an array
which contains the lines of text read from the server.
list ( [ MSGNUM ] )
If called with an argument the "list" returns the size
of the message in octets.
If called without arguments a reference to a hash is
returned. The keys will be the "MSGNUM"'s of all
undeleted messages and the values will be their size in
octets.
get ( MSGNUM [, FH ] )
Get the message "MSGNUM" from the remote mailbox. If
"FH" is not given then get returns a reference to an
array which contains the lines of text read from the
server. If "FH" is given then the lines returned from
the server are printed to the filehandle "FH".
getfh ( MSGNUM )
As per get(), but returns a tied filehandle. Reading
from this filehandle returns the requested message. The
filehandle will return EOF at the end of the message and
should not be reused.
last ()
Returns the highest "MSGNUM" of all the messages
accessed.
popstat ()
Returns a list of two elements. These are the number of
undeleted elements and the size of the mbox in octets.
ping ( USER )
Returns a list of two elements. These are the number of
new messages and the total number of messages for
"USER".
uidl ( [ MSGNUM ] )
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Returns a unique identifier for "MSGNUM" if given. If
"MSGNUM" is not given "uidl" returns a reference to a
hash where the keys are the message numbers and the
values are the unique identifiers.
delete ( MSGNUM )
Mark message "MSGNUM" to be deleted from the remote
mailbox. All messages that are marked to be deleted will
be removed from the remote mailbox when the server con-
nection closed.
reset ()
Reset the status of the remote POP3 server. This
includes reseting the status of all messages to not be
deleted.
quit ()
Quit and close the connection to the remote POP3 server.
Any messages marked as deleted will be deleted from the
remote mailbox.

NOTES

If a "Net::POP3" object goes out of scope before "quit"
method is called then the "reset" method will called before
the connection is closed. This means that any messages
marked to be deleted will not be.

SEE ALSO

Net::Netrc, Net::Cmd

AUTHOR

Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1995-2003 Graham Barr. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
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